by Rosetta Taylor

Created on: October 22, 2009   Last Updated: April 29, 2012

When the Pilgrims arrived in Cape Cod in November 1620 they were at the final stage of a wandering journey that had seen them leave their homeland twelve years earlier. In the intervening years they had tried and failed to find a place where they could practice their religion and also live their lives and rear their children in the way they believed was right. Their journey to America in search of those freedoms was, literally, the culmination of a pilgrimage.

In the 16th century England was a country where a single permitted religion and national politics were inextricably linked.  Not only was everyone compelled to attend state-ordained church services, they were punished if they disagreed with the rituals of those services and the approved interpretation of sacred scriptures. In other words, everyone was told exactly what to believe, risking fines, imprisonment, torture and even a death sentence if they did not obey.

At the end of the 16th century there had been a steady growth in the number of Englishmen who were dissatisfied with the forms of prayer and service and also with the way the state-run church was governed. Those who illegally adhered to their Roman Catholic faith did so in secret, whilst the vehemently Protestant Puritans aimed to reform the Church of England to their own liking from within. A third dissident faction, a sub-group of Puritans who became known as Separatists, found their differences with the Church of England to be so great that they could not avoid a direct clash. Two of their leaders, Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood, were executed for sedition in 1593.

A congregation of Puritans in Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, established the Separatist Church of Scrooby in 1606. They already knew they were on a collision course with brutal authority and could not remain much longer in England without sacrificing either their lives or their faith. Although it was illegal to leave England without permission and the necessary documentation, the bulk of the Scrooby congregation were able to flee to Holland in 1608, to join other Separatists who had found refuge in a nation with greater religious tolerance. Their story could have ended there, without including America, but Holland was not to be their Promised Land.

They found in Holland the religious freedom they craved, but the daily lives of an essentially rural group transported to foreign industrial and commercial centres were difficult.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>